There are many complexities to the financial services business. At any given time large amounts of sales transaction data must be organized and processed. Such data may relate to many types of sales transactions and much of it is necessary to keep the business running smoothly. Some of the more significant classifications of sales transaction data stem from the fact that in the financial services business there are multiple distribution channels each with multiple distributors and many different incentive plans for employees. In most instances, these incentive plans are constantly modified and changed. This is particularly true in the financial services sector where distributors and sales representatives may require certain licenses and appointments in order to legally sell certain financial instruments. The status of the license or appointment data changes continuously and must therefore be updated on a regular basis. Furthermore, the volume of sales transactions is large, and for each transaction a number of tests must carried out to validate the sales agents' credentials and compute the compensation amounts associated with the sales transactions.
Updating such a large amount of records is a cumbersome process that can require significant system resources. Thus, systems must be configured to efficiently validate sales transactions in view of the licenses and/or appointments necessary to legally complete the transaction. Existing systems do not currently have a mechanism for processing such data in a way that minimizes the time required to process license and appointment data and validate a sales agent's credentials before distributing compensation to the sales agent for the transaction. Therefore there is a need for an improved mechanism for processing sales transaction data.